


Back to Basics

by misura



Category: Now You See Me (2013)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:11:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: the more things change, the more they start the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to Basics

.01 _Jack Wilder_

“I will give $100 to anyone who can show me how this trick is done,” Jack says, and this one time, he means it - if anyone walks up to him now and tells him he's bending the spoon with his mind, by magic, he'll be happy to give them a hundred bucks. Without stealing their wallet, after, even.

Of course, it's far more likely the guy in the sports jacket will walk up to him and check his sleeves, expose what he thinks to be the trick - Jack watches the way the expressions on the audience's faces shift from wonder to mere interest; there's a reason Thaddeus Bradley sells as well as he does, and this is it.

People enjoy seeing someone else taken down a peg, even more than they enjoy seeing something they can't explain, something magical. Something that might make them doubt all the things they thought they knew.

“You have a very good eye, sir,” he tells the guy, who looks smug and nods happily at the inevitable demands for Jack to fork over the money.

(The watch is junk, but there's a nice chunk of cash in the wallet and a picture of a bulldog.)

 

.02 _Merritt McKinney_

It's easy, nowadays, to pick out 'the special few', the ones with secrets to hide and guilty consciences, but more than before, Merritt also notices the others, the people whose minds brush against him full of warmth and light.

He likes that. It's easy, perhaps even inevitable, to turn into a cynic when you make a living as what some might call 'a stick-up artist', getting people to pay you for not exposing them for the scum that they are to their loved ones.

It's very hard to _stay_ a cynic when all you need to do is look around to see joy and love and goodwill towards one's fellow man.

“You want this to go away?”

Of course, joy and love and goodwill don't pay the bills. (He supposes he might make his landlord and the utilities company _think_ he's paid them, but that seems a tad unethical, somehow. It also wouldn't be nearly as much fun.)

“Let me see your wallet.”

 

.03 _Daniel Atlas_

“And do you see your card here?” Daniel asks, already knowing the answer. Some would say that predictability is boring, that a bit of surprise and excitement are good things to have in one's life.

Daniel would politely disagree.

Right now, he's three seconds ahead of schedule, which is acceptable, and he's known from eight hours ago which card will be picked. He knows who will applaud, who will only pretend to applaud, and who will try to get herself invited to his apartment, after.

He doesn't need magic for any of these things and, in fact, this entire night, he will use magic only one time, for the grand finale that he might have done as easily without, except that doing so would have cost him fifty bucks and involved him relying on someone else to push a button at exactly the right time, and Daniel prefers not to rely on other people for anything unless he absolutely has to.

(He lights up the tower and lets the applause and admiration wash over him, accepting it as his due for a show well-run.)

 

.04 _Henley Reeves_

“A lady's got to have handcuffs, right, girls?” Henley asks, and the crowd roars, because it mostly consists of boys, who are always quite taken with the idea of girls owning handcuffs.

(Daniel is the exception, not the rule.)

(Thank God for smaller mercies.)

The act still gives her a thrill, to see who will run back for the axe, and who will just stand there, watching, frozen. (She thinks Jack and perhaps Merritt might dive right in after her, while Daniel would approach the problem coldly logical and think of a way to stop the piranhas from getting tipped into the basin. Assuming any of them would be taken in.)

She's eaten alive; she miraculously reappears in the middle of a crowded room. She gets high-fived and applauded, and she can tell they will tell their friends about this, about her - some of them will spoil the ending, but some of them will come again, bringing their friends without telling them in advance about the ending.

(The room smells of beer and sweat and testosterone, after, but not for very long, because even if Henley doesn't need magic to capture an audience, that doesn't mean she won't use it when doing so is much more convenient than, say, spending a couple of hours mopping up.)

(A lady's got to have priorities, after all.)


End file.
